The scoreboard shows the record attendance for last year's SU vs. Villanova basketball game in the Carrier Dome. Lauren Long / The Post-Standard

The giant poster beams upon C.J. Fair and the rest of his Syracuse University teammates each day. Located in the right upper corner of the Melo Center is a photographic rendering of last season’s record-making on-campus basketball crowd of 34,616.

That game, played in the Carrier Dome against Villanova while ESPN’s GameDay visited, required seats that stretched to the opposite end zone of the Dome to establish the sizeable college basketball gathering.

Today, when the Wildcats visit again, that poster is in danger of becoming obsolete. Carrier Dome officials have said they squeezed more seats into the arena to facilitate a larger crowd. And Fair, the Syracuse freshman who watched the game in wonder from his television last winter, can’t quite grasp what today’s vast collection of fans might feel like.

“I can only imagine what it will be like in person. I know it’s going to be amazing in there,” Fair said. “It’s going to be real loud. Very intense. I think it’s going to give us an extra boost to get pumped up for the game.”

The game, for all its focus on the fanfare, matches two of the Big East’s behemoths, both of which are coming off road defeats to Top 10 teams. Villanova dropped a heartbreaker to Connecticut on Monday, the same day Syracuse lost to Pittsburgh.

Villanova, with its habitual reliance on perimeter play, has exhibited surprising rebounding prowess this season. The Wildcats sit second in the Big East in rebounding margin at plus-7.4, a factor coach Jay Wright attributes to the bigger bodies he’s attracted to his suburban Philadelphia campus.

Sophomore Mouphtaou Yarou, at 6-foot-10, leads the Wildcats in rebounding with 7.8 in 24 minutes of play. He’s followed closely by veteran big man Antonio Pena at 7.1. Isaiah Armwood and the 6-11 Maurice Sutton combine to contribute 6.3 boards per game.

But Wright and his shooting guard Corey Stokes also cite the contributions from Villanova’s guards in the Wildcats’ rebounding margin.

“When the guards help on rebounds,” SU forward Rick Jackson said, “you know you have to keep it high because they’ll come in there to slap at it and things like that.”

“They’ve always pounded us on the glass,” Wright said of Syracuse. “Sometimes we’ve overcome it and sometimes we haven’t.”

The Orange needed to overcome the loss of their leading scorer at Pittsburgh. Kris Joseph missed the game after his head slammed into the Carrier Dome floor following a drive to the basket against Cincinnati last Saturday. Joseph practiced for the first time since the incident on Thursday. He is likely to play today.

His presence should ignite the colossal Syracuse crowd. That crowd will consist, in part, of SU students who have camped out in the corridors of the Carrier Dome to secure prime seats for today’s game.

The crowd, which will number at least 33,000, adds an element of excitement to a game already considered to be the marquee matchup of today’s Big East schedule.

“It’s great. It really just lifts the team -- all those orange jerseys out there,” Jackson said. “It’s a lot of fun. It’s going to be a big game. It especially helps when the game is at 12 o’clock and you got all them people in there with you.”

Jackson, one of three Syracuse players who hail from Philadelphia, considers Villanova to be an Orange rival of recent vintage. Jackson, Scoop Jardine and Dion Waiters know most of Villanova’s players. They prefer to hold the winning trump card in off-season conversations.

But Jackson and Jay Wright each believe the rivalry has real roots and serious staying power.

“Every time we play them,” Jackson said, “it’s just a real big thing. You don’t want to lose in front of 33,000. That’s no good.”

“Syracuse is a unique atmosphere in college basketball,” Wright said. “People are really nice to you. Everybody gets in there early. They’re very polite. But during the game, they’re crazy. We’ve always had a great respect level for them.”

Wright said he looks forward to these Dome bonanzas. “Enjoyable” is the word he picked to describe them.

His players, much like the Syracuse guys, also appreciate performing in front of the large, boisterous crowd that will pack the place today.

“Every time we play them, everybody looks forward to this game,” Stokes said. “They always sell a lot of tickets to the gym. And me, my teammates and the coaches -- we can’t wait to play against them. It’s just a great atmosphere and it helps us prepare, to see where we’re at in a road environment like that. To see if we can keep our composure and keep our focus and stay mentally tough.”